by P. K. Lentz
Turning away, Thalassia began to ascend the stairs.
"The garden looks dry," Demosthenes observed to Eurydike. "Would you water it? And then you can apologize to Thalassia by taking her on that shopping trip."
Perceptive Eurydike, who knew when she was being got rid of, muttered something about a cow before dragging her feet to the exit.
When she was gone, Demosthenes caught up to Thalassia, who stopped and faced him.
"Have patience with her," Demosthenes pleaded. "For almost three years now, it has been only the two of us in this house."
"She's no bother," Thalassia said. "She reminds me of someone I knew."
"Not someone you killed, I hope."
Her smile was faint and sad. "A friend," she said. "From when I had them."
A part of him yearned to wedge a question into that opening and use it to pry out more of Thalassia's past. But with Eurydike just outside and no suitable question presenting itself in time, he gave up. Rather, he cleared his throat and changed the topic. "Eurydike said you were drawing."
Thalassia turned to finish ascending the stair. "Yes. Come see."
II. ATHENS 4. Kiss Me
He followed Thalassia up through his home's unfurnished women's quarters and emerged behind her through the hatch which led out onto the rooftop terrace. In one corner of its floor sat many small sheets of scraped parchment, evidently cut from a larger sheet taken from the house's storeroom. Thalassia stooped to collect a number of them and offered them to Demosthenes.
He examined the sheets. The topmost contained a neatly labeled schematic drawn in a smooth and steady hand depicting what looked like an archer's bow mounted horizontally on the end of a fence-post. The large print above read Gastraphetes.
Belly-bow? A nonsense word.
"This is a weapon?" Demosthenes supposed aloud.
Thalassia nodded. She leaned casually on the balustrade looking out over the streets of the deme of Tyrmeidai.
The next two sheets showed less portable and less deadly machines. Comprised of complex arrangements of shafts, toothed wheels, and paddle-like blades, they were labeled Grain-grinder (wind) and Grain-grinder (water). After them came a page depicting a blacksmith's furnace alongside a set of instructions which were likely only intelligible to a man practiced in using one. That sheet was labeled Stomoma Athenaion.
Athenian Steel.
The next was covered with an intricate arrangement of squiggles and dots. The neat letters nestled amongst the fluid lines spelled out familiar names: Athens. Sparta. Thebes. Argos. Elis. Pylos. Delphi.
"This looks like no map I have ever seen," Demosthenes observed.
"That's because it's accurate." Thalassia twirled a finger in her hair. "The world's a sphere, by the way," she added in passing. "I'll draw that for you later. Nautical charts, too."
Absorbed in the tiny, snaking rivers, the oddly shaped bays and islands, the flocks of lambdas bearing the familiar names of mountain ranges, Demosthenes set himself to the task of hunting down and reading every last caption. Thalassia interrupted the effort.
"I think we should consider telling Alkibiades."
Demosthenes looked up. "About what? You? Everything?"
"Maybe not everything, but enough to make him an ally."
The first question to spring to Demosthenes' mind was, Ally or replacement? But he left that one unspoken. "You told me that history would remember Alkibiades," he asked instead. "What for?"
"Forward thinking," she answered. "Winning battles." She hesitated briefly. "Arguably losing the war for Athens and costing you your life in the process."
Demosthenes' breath caught. With the next, he asked, "How?"
"The plan to send you to Sicily about ten years from now will be his. But, of course, that all takes place in a world that will never exist. Our actions will change his fate as much as they will yours. Alkibiades can be of use to us politically. I think we can trust him. And if I'm wrong... well, he can always have an unfortunate fall from his horse, if you catch my meaning."
"I... do," Demosthenes said uncertainly. "It is disturbing, to say the least, to hear you speak of murdering prominent Athenian citizens. Ones whom I call friend, at that. I must think on whether I dislike Alkibiades enough to–"
"Kiss me," Thalassia said plainly.
Demosthenes' eyes flicked up to meet hers. Just as quickly, they fell away. "Pardon?"
She slid off the balustrade to stand in front of him. The thin stack of parchment hung by his side, imprisoned in an involuntary fist of sweating stone. "The Caliate's headquarters is a place called Spiral. When we are there, we do whatever we wish. Anything that makes us happy. Whatever urges we have, we indulge without shame or regret."
"It's like Corinth, then," Demosthenes muttered.
Thalassia smiled. "I want us to do more than kiss, Demosthenes. Eurydike, too, if you approve. I would like that, the three of us." Her tone gave no indication that she was anything but serious. "But for now, a kiss. And by kiss, what I mean is, you're sixteen and alone in the olive groves with your hot cousin. Not even the gods are watching. No one will ever know. That kind of kiss." She took a step closer, coming almost toe-to-toe with him. "Now stop thinking and just do it."
For the space of several dozen loud beats of his quickening heart, Demosthenes said nothing while his mind spun circles in desperate search for a reply. He was hardly one to shy away from a challenge. If he were, he would have neither Thalassia nor Eurydike in his home, nor would he possess any victories to his name as a general, least of all the most recent. No, he would have a pale young citizen girl for a wife and a few properly servile slaves for her to lord it over at home whilst he sought more stimulating companionship elsewhere, as all of Athens deemed proper.
Certainly he could kiss Thalassia, but well enough to satisfy her? It would be a performance, a falsehood, for how could he ever permit himself to lust after such a... a monster, however pleasing its appearance?
Yet she was not asking for lust or even sex–yet. Only a kiss. Perhaps there was no harm in granting her that.
At the end of too long a silence, Demosthenes lifted his hung head, drew a bracing breath and looked Thalassia squarely in pale, opaque eyes which stood almost level with his own. Her face showed no trace of eagerness or anticipation, but as he drew so close that his uneven breath rebounded off the tip of her nose, she gently sucked her lips, moistening them before they parted to receive the imminent contact.
He shut his eyes and paused, breath held, while behind his closed lids he endured the vision of a blood-drenched battle-Fury mutilating the flesh of her foe. He felt the ghost of Thalassia's iron claw constricting his throat, heard Eden shriek at her, Wormwhore!
He backed away and opened his eyes to find Thalassia's waiting lips drawn tight in a frown. That melted away, she nodded, and of a sudden it was though nothing had occurred. She touched his shoulder in a friendly gesture and walked around him to cross the tile floor to the hatch that led down into the house.
Distractedly, Demosthenes pretended to study the parchments in front of the precisely no one who was present to witness him. Then he waited until the women of the house had left for the agora on their shopping excursion before descending and returning to the city to resume the day's business.
II. ATHENS 5. Wet
Demosthenes returned home at dusk to find that Eurydike had filled the recessed bath in the private chamber behind the megaron and warmed it with boiled water from the hearth. The night prior, exhaustion had led him to perform only a cursory de-brining, and so with Thalassia up on the roof reinventing agriculture or some such, Eurydike bathed her master properly, oiling and scraping his skin, washing his hair, and lastly engaging him in some less practical aquatic activities. Afterward, she sat naked and glistening astride Demosthenes' lap in the bath. Her long wet locks of deep red adhered to her cheeks and neck, streaming trails of water over her spotted shoulders.
“Lord,” she said in a hushed voice, the sharp tip
of her upturned nose grazing his. “Would you have a report on my mission?”
“Tell me,” Demosthenes said eagerly.
“Well, first of all, while we were out today I asked Thalassia about her stupid name, and she said it wasn't her real name.” Of course, Demosthenes knew this, but he took it as though it were news. “I asked her real name, and she told me it was...” Eurydike's face crinkled. “Dzhenna? I'm not sure exactly. A stupid name that I forget. Then I asked where she was from that they had such weird names and didn't know that thalassia was a chunk of wood.
“She pointed to the sky and said she was from the stars. 'Stop fucking with me,' I told her, and she said, 'Actually, a little ball of rock near just one star.' 'You don't really believe that,' I said, but she shrugged and I just said, 'Whatever, star-girl.' I didn't want it to seem like I was prying. I did an excellent job of that, I promise. I think you're right: she's just not right in the head.”
Star-girl? Demosthenes chuckled. Astraneanis. A rather tranquil nickname for a blood-soaked being.
Eurydike's wide eyes and the conspicuous excuse she had just planted seemed almost certain to foreshadow coming failure.
“A little later, I asked if she had any brothers or sisters. She said one sister.” Eurydike's grip shifted from Demosthenes' neck to his hands so that they might support her weight as she bent her naked body into an arch and lowered her head back, back, until it was submerged in the bath. Surfacing, she spat a stream of water into the air, fountain-like, before twisting in her master's lap to sit across it. While she finished the maneuver and wiped water from her eyes, Demosthenes waited patiently for what he rather doubted would be useful intelligence.
Eurydike resumed, “I asked where this sister was, and she said, 'Walking next to me in the agora asking questions like her master told her to.” Eurydike widened her eyes in an assertion of innocence. “But I swear I was subtle as can be, lord!” Although apologetic, Eurydike did not seem upset by her failure.
“I know you were, bright eyes,” Demosthenes reassured her. He kissed the nape of her neck, which tasted faintly of olive oil. “You did well.”
Eurydike twisted over her master's shoulder, giving him a face full of wet freckled breast while she reached for the clay cup of wine they were sharing. She poured a trickle onto her lips, which pursed as though the wine were sour, which it was not. “I do have a big problem with Thalassia, though,” she said glumly. She put the cup's rim to Demosthenes' lip and made him drink. “Two problems, actually.”
“That few? Do tell.”
“Well, for one, I know you said not to expect much of her, but she's fucking useless. Sure, she carries water like a horse, but she claims to be able to cook only one thing. It's called bitchcakes. She said she made you some already in Pylos, and you don't want to eat them again.”
“True...” Demosthenes agreed.
“I'm not stupid,” Eurydike said with a look of mild annoyance. “I know there's no such thing as a bitchcake. She's fucking with me, and now so are you. Which is fine, but only because of my second problem.”
The slick Thracian's mouth settled into an angry pout, and her eyes cast about the room as if in search of some object at which to direct her spontaneous ire.
“Out with it already!” Demosthenes urged playfully.
Eurydike graced him with a petulant look and sighed just as petulantly. “The second problem, lord, is—” She shook sodden locks. “No, it's too embarrassing. I can't say.”
Demosthenes slapped the water, splashing his slave's face and ample breast. “You try my patience, Thratta. Do you want me to set you free?”
It was a common threat he deployed, but never meant. The options for someone like Eurydike upon gaining freedom were, effectively, cheap prostitute and even cheaper prostitute.
The slave giggled, as was her custom when her master chided her. Usually she knew full well she was asking for it, as was the case now. Her warm, near-weightless soft body shifted on his lap until she faced him squarely.
“The problem is that I fucking like her!” Eurydike groaned. Her head slumped onto Demosthenes' shoulder in theatrical despair. “I tried to hate her, lord, I did!” she sobbed into his collarbone. “But you know what that useless bitch did? She took my old dresses from me and let me use the money you gave us to buy new ones for myself! And you should have seen what we paid because of her! She slithers up and talks with that dumb, fake accent of hers—you notice how it comes and goes—and the shop owners practically hand over whatever she wants. I can't even be jealous of her evil powers because she uses them to do such good!”
After a final, extended groan, Eurydike raised the face she had hidden in mock shame to look at her master. After a moment she put an open palm on one of his freshly shaven cheeks and planted a wet kiss on the other.
“You look frightened, lord,” she observed. “What's wrong?”
Demosthenes shuddered, but not from the chill of the rapidly cooling bathwater. “I was just wondering which state of affairs is worse for me,” he confessed bleakly, “having you at Thalassia's throat … or having you on her side.”
II. ATHENS 6. Wormwhore
The following morning, Demosthenes stood on the rooftop terrace alone with Thalassia.
“A clumsy spy you sent,” she said. She showed no trace of being annoyed. “You could not have thought that would work. But I suppose the attempt shows that I must be more forthright.”
Demosthenes stood beside her on the rail, looking out over the dawn-lit red clay rooftops of Athens. He considered his response and opted for directness. “Foremost, I would know why you are called traitor,” he said.
Thalassia fell silent for a long while, just staring over the city. “Your mistakes caused the deaths of many men in Aetolia,” she said at length, “including a hundred and twenty Athenian citizens. You felt such shame that you could not bear to show your face in this city afterward. Is the wound not still just as raw as it was on the day it occurred?”
Indeed, her mere mention of the disaster in Aetolia, where more Athenians under his command were slaughtered in one day than should have fallen in any five battles lost, caused a sudden pang in Demosthenes' belly and a knot in his chest. But he drew a cleansing breath and answered with a voice that shook but a little.
“That failure causes me immense shame, which I will take to my grave. But I own the action and make no secret of it, as you seem to wish to do. My life is open to you. The reverse must also be true. I will know of your shame... or have you cast from my house. Whatever the cost.”
Thalassia fell silent again, and then, “I did betray them. Is that enough? I turned my back on the Caliate, on people who were my friends, and on the leader who had given me so much. I betrayed them for the sake of him.” She did not speak the name of the Worm, but there was much venom in the referring pronoun. Her wintry blue eyes remained fixed on the rooftops, to which she also seemed to address her quiet confession. “Is that enough?” she repeated, making clear it was her fervent hope that it would be.
“It is not,” Demosthenes said. “But... today, it shall suffice. When you are ready, we shall speak again on the matter, although it must be soon. For now, you may tell me of other things. Such as what is a layer?”
Thalassia looked over at him, her eyes suddenly brighter, surely in gratitude for the change of topic to one less sensitive.
Then she frowned. “It's complicated... but...” She gestured at the corner of the rooftop which had become her favored workspace. “Do you see that stack of parchments there?”
Demosthenes nodded. The leaves in question were neat squares, each bearing a drawing of some innovation which Thalassia conceived of introducing to Athens.
“Imagine that one of the sheets in the stack is this world,” she instructed. “Athens, all of Hellas, is a drop of ink on its surface. Now imagine that likewise every sheet in the pile is a world unto itself, some very much like your own, others wildly different. On the sheet above yours, there is anot
her Demosthenes who never met me, because there is no me there to meet. He marches on in ignorance of the fate he'll meet one day in Sicily. On other sheets, there are still other Demosthenes, some of whom lead lives very different from your own and who will meet different deaths. On others, Demosthenes never existed at all because his parents never met or themselves never existed.”
Thalassia paused and looked at him gently, earnestly, as a tutor would at a student, in search of understanding. He was pleasantly surprised by her patience.
“That is what you wish to do to the Worm,” Demosthenes observed, hopefully proving that he understood at least a little. “You would cause him never to exist.”
Thalassia's answering expression suggested that he had fallen at least somewhat shy of making his tutor proud.
“Yes, but...” she began, and stopped. “I suppose it's as good a time as any to tell you what makes him unlike any other being in the universe, apart from Magdalen. Across all layers, there is only one of him. And yours is the layer in which he was, or will be, born, so—”
In the hope of redeeming himself, Demosthenes cut her off: “So if he is erased here, then unlike Demosthenes of Thria, there will be no other Worms left in other layers to carry on the name.”
This won him a crooked smile, a cryptic look that said he was right... if perhaps not entirely.
“And then what will happen?” Demosthenes asked. “How will you know when you... when we have done enough to erase him?”
Thalassia frowned and returned her gaze to the rooftops. “A good question,” she said. “Too good.”
“You have no answer?”
“Many answers,” she said. “And none. I fucked Alkibiades last night.”
Demosthenes stood in silence, caught off-guard by the sudden non-sequitur.
“As my ally, you need to know that,” she said. Still she did not look at him, and Demosthenes was glad for it. “I plan to do it again. Regularly, maybe. But you needn't worry that—”